The Tenants at Open Book Performance Hall

The Tenants, by Zeyy Fawaz, is part of the first Midwestern Festival of New Middle Eastern and SWANA (Southwest Asian and North African) Plays, hosted by New Arab American Theater Works at Open Book Performance Hall in Minneapolis. In this surreal psychological thriller, a couple's life shifts in strange ways when another couple rents the studio next door, with the tension escalating into something claustrophobic for both characters and audience. The festival features six new plays by Midwestern SWANA playwrights, including works by Alexander Attea, Kayla Karnesky, Zeyy Fawaz, Zainab Hussein, Novid Parsi, and Sana Wazwaz, directed by Sherrine Azab. Each reading is followed by a 20-minute talkback facilitated by educators, organizers, and artists from the SWANA community.